Smart armour will determine most badass martial artist

An Australian company has
developed a modern suit of body armour that is packed with sensors
to measure the impact of martial arts weapons on the body. The
company hopes to build an entertainment property around real fights
between martial arts experts wearing the Iron Man-esque
suits.

The Sydney-based company -- Unified
Weapons Master (UWM) -- worked with engineers to develop the
armour, which is designed to protect the body but also register the
impact of every strike. The aim is to create a score system based
around the damage that would have been inflicted on players if they
hadn't been wearing the armour.

Cofounder Justin Forsell has been thinking about the idea since
1998. He had trained around the world to instructor level in
various martial arts, spending time training at the Buddhai Sawan
Sword Fencing Institute in Bangkok, learning traditional
weapons-based fighting called krabi krabong.

"The instructors and students were highly
athletic and incredibly skilled, but they had no forum in which to
compete," UWM CEO David Pysden explains to Wired.co.uk. "He felt
that many of these arts are slowly becoming lost and no-one really
appreciated their incredible abilities."

The vision is to create a forum where weapons-based
practitioners can compete in their chosen martial art in a full
combat situation with high levels of safety

Forsell's
vision was to create "a forum where weapons-based practitioners can
compete in their chosen art in a full combat situation and to
objectively know the outcome, but with high levels of safety". Thus
UWM was conceived.

Over the last four years, the founders have been working on the
concept, spending the last two years developing prototype suits of
armour. These have been tested by martial arts experts including
World Muay Thai Champion Sone Vannathy, who has fought against a
sparring partner dressed in the armour. "I can kick him, punch him
wherever I want without worrying about the safety," Vannathy
explains in a video.

UWM Tech DemoUWM - Unified Weapons Master

The armour has been built by a
team that has experience in building armour and weapons for films
such as The Lord of the Rings. It is made from strong, but
light and flexible plates that are packed with sensors. These
measure not only the location of any impact, but the force. This
data is sent wirelessly to a computer where software which draws on
medical research then calculates the damage that would have been
inflicted on an unprotected body. This allows for a videogame-like
scoring system that tracks damage to competitors. After a certain
number of blows, a player will be knocked out or killed.

Pysden won't be drawn into more detail than this about how
exactly the suits work. He told us, "The technology behind the
armour is proprietary and confidential," adding that, "it uses a
combination of different force measurement and other technologies,
custom software, advanced impact materials and medical
research".

The startup is now looking for further capital to realise its
vision. "One strategy we are pursuing is the launch of our
membership programme through our website. The next step is to
produce production versions of the armour and software, suitable
for competition and broadcast television, and to hold our first
events," Pysden says.

Ultimately, he adds, UWM is about "preserving, honouring and
reigniting weapons martial arts".

He explains that of the 303 distinct styles of martial arts, 96
are weapons based. "Until now, because of the risk of serious
injury, many of them can't be practiced in a full-combat situation.
We are going to change that by creating a format that unifies these
arts into a single competition where the winner is determined
objectively using our patented combination of technologies."